Viacom sues YouTube for copyright infringement

Just like ISPs have for years been "knowingly and for financial benefit" transmitting copyrighted material? And how do you know that YouTube "has not put in any effort to remove it within reason"? They remove infringing material promptly. They are attempting to develop filters, but how do you distinguish infringing material from parodies or reviews? Why should YouTube beheld to a higher standard than ISPs?

Unlike ISP's who deal with data packets, YouTube has access to metadata such as keywords that can be used to identify and flag potentially infringeable content.

leshik:

Er, who exactly puts that metadata onto the files? If it's not YouTube, then the immediate question is "how trustworthy is this metadata?" YouTube cannot trust user-supplied metadata for obvious reasons. YouTube supplied metadata is stunningly expensive; they might as well just fold up and go home. Now, Viacom supplied "metadata" in the form of a letter asserting that a particular file is an instance of material that they own the copyright to, well that sort of metadata is acted upon already. So what more do you want YouTube to do with this metadata?

As for you claimed disanalogy to ISPs, ISPs have access to file titles, which are a sort of metadata (sparse, sure, but metadata nonetheless), and which typically identify the file. So should all ISPs ban any file that contains the phrase "South Park" on pain of legal sanction? A quick look at the problems of rule-based spam filtering shows that some people will trivially avoid any sort of metadata filter you implement (short of a sort of audio/video fingerprint), and one rather suspects that plenty of non-infringing content will get swept up in the filter also, and there's no reason to think that those people deserve to have their content removed just because they were unlucky enough to have someone compare their video to an episode of Simpsons or whatever.

Don't forget that the majority of ISPs give people web/ftp space as part of the package, so they are actually hosting those files, even if e-mail doesn't count as "hosting."

OK. So Viacom tapes "MTV Spring Break, Newport Beach" (cue videos of legion of horny teens taking over public beach), and some person uploads it on YouTube. Exqueeze me? That's a copyright violation? 150,000 bucks? Viacom should have to pay property tax and restitution for taking over my area.

Originally posted by neville_the_concrete_aboriginal:...I do think that the law needs to be applied consistently. If YouTube is allowed to keep operating with a substantial amount of infringing content, then anyone should be allowed to set-up a server that people can 'contribute' to, as long as they obey takedown notices from copyright holders. As far as I can see, that's what YouTube does.

The legal requirement is not "operating with a substantial amount of infringing content." Its whether the technology has "substantial non-infringing uses." (See, Sony vs. Universal Studios.) Grokster failed that test. YouTube does not.

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If a large number of people set-up such a thing, then you can be sure that the record companies would start sueing, just as they have with peer-to-peer filesharing. There's no way record/movie companies could track all of the servers, so huge amounts of copyright infringing content would slip through the cracks.

This is already happening in P2P networks around the world. That is why the entertainment industry's policy of suing infringers is a lost cause. The internet is designed to share digital information. Nobody can filter it with any great success without also filtering out non-infringing content. Is that what we want -- sanitized internet services that don't contain any infringing material but also filter out a lots of legal, non-infringing material as well? I would rather error on the side of free exchange of information. Yes, take down infringing material and discourage the infringing activity, but don't shut down companies that, in spite of their efforts, are unable to prevent all infringing material from ever appearing. That is asking the impossible.

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My problem is that large corporations are being treated differently to individuals. Hence, if a rule is applied to individuals, I want it to be applied to corporations. I don't think that is what is happening, with the exception of this ViaCom lawsuit.

Actually, in many ways corporations are treated legally as if they were individuals. In any case, lots of companies have been sued, successfully, by the record/movie companies for copyright infringement, including KaZaa, Grokster, iMesh, Aimster, AudioGalaxy, etc. How were they given preferential treatment?

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Finally, I think that YouTube is profiting substantially from copyright infringing material. Perhaps as a demonstration of good faith, if a video is taken down for copyright reasons, they should then refund all advertising revenue that they received from views of that video to the advertiser.

That would be an accounting nightmare. The real problem is that copyright law is not very compatible with modern digital technology. The internet is based on the copying of digital content. The more we try to lock down content with filters, lawsuits, take-downs, DRM, etc., the more we restrict technological progress. Content owners should seek ways to profit from what is already occurring instead of trying to police the internet. The media companies should make deals with YouTube and similar sites so that they make a profit from the appearance of copyrighted material rather than waste resources in a futile effort to stop it. The music/movie companies should even monetize P2P file-sharing and enjoy a new revenue stream instead of trying to cling to a dying business model.

Originally posted by IFeelFree:Why should YouTube beheld to a higher standard than ISPs?

YouTube receives ad revenue from the content; a normal ISP doesn't.

So? ISPs receive monthly cash revenue (service fees) from their users. YouTube doesn't. ISPs benefit financially from all the users who sign up specifically to share infringing content. At one time, P2P was said to be the killer app that was driving broadband adoption. Nobody tried to sue ISPs specifically because of the "safe harbor" exemption. The same should apply to YouTube.

Don't you see that as a problem with their "safe harbor" claim? YouTube directly profits by hosting copyrighted material. If they remove popular copyrighted clips; they lose revenue. Is it in their best interest to remove these clips... No.

I like what was suggested above. Infringed materials should have ad revenue returned to the copyright holder.

Maybe YouTube should step up and pay a portion of ad revenue to copyright holders to avoid future problems. Without a program that rewards the Viacoms of the world, why would any of them want their material hosted on any site?

Edit: Sorry IFeelFree... I see that you suggested the same thing about revenue sharing a couple of posts above. Who knows, if there was revenue sharing for copyright holders (via YouTube and others) the media companies may back net neutrality laws as anything that prevents them from earning money seems to provoke Congress into action.

Originally posted by Filip Stanek:Sorry, I thought the people at arstechnica would have a clue about how to use a computer. Its absolutely trivial to record anything that gets played on my screen. I assumed the users of these forums would know about this, but I was obviously wrong. My apologies for posting here, it won't happen again.

I know how to use a computer thank you, I've built serveral for myself and my family and I reguarly do video editing on my home movies. You can do a lot of things on your computer, but that doesn't make it easy. Ask Joe Blow or Susie Q how to copy Youtube videos and they will have no idea what you are talking about. I'm sure someone somewhere can do it, but that does not make it easy.

It may be trivial, but it is illegal to make copies of copyrighted content without permission. P2P is very easy to use also, but that hasn't prevented lots of individuals from getting sued for using it. YouTube is not responsible for what users do with videos anymore than DVD manufacturers (who are not the copyright holders) are responsible if people illegally copy DVDs.

Did you bother to read the posts you quoted at all? If you had, you'd have seen that a claim was made that it's impossible to download youtube video, and later that it's just not easy for noobs, when in fact it's quite trivial and dozens of sites are set up to do it. (If you know how to read HTML you don't need a site, but they're still quicker.) There was nothing mentioned about the morality of the action or how it involves the terms of service.

Originally posted by IFeelFree:Why should YouTube beheld to a higher standard than ISPs?

YouTube receives ad revenue from the content; a normal ISP doesn't.

So? ISPs receive monthly cash revenue (service fees) from their users. YouTube doesn't. ISPs benefit financially from all the users who sign up specifically to share infringing content. At one time, P2P was said to be the killer app that was driving broadband adoption. Nobody tried to sue ISPs specifically because of the "safe harbor" exemption. The same should apply to YouTube.

Don't you see that as a problem with their "safe harbor" claim? YouTube directly profits by hosting copyrighted material. If they remove popular copyrighted clips; they lose revenue. Is it in their best interest to remove these clips... No.

There's a description problem here. YouTube benefits from hosting material. Even if there were no infringing clips on YouTube, they would still benefit, and benefit most from the most popular clips. In exactly the same way, ISPs benefit by providing hosting services (by being more attractive than ISPs that don't, for example).

The problem with your framing of the issue in terms of infringing clips is that it implies that YouTube is going to some special effort to obtain, or at least to prevent the loss of, these infringing clips. I have seen no evidence of this. Sure YouTube stands to lose revenue if the most popular clips get yanked, but they have been removing them when requested to do so.

To further flesh out the economic analysis, one would have to include a calculation of the increased ad revenue of those infringing clips compared to the liability exposure that hosting those clips would expose YouTube to. That exposure is essentially limitless, in the sense that it's certainly large enough to shut YouTube down if they don't pull infringing content as the law requires. So it's not at all clear that there's an economic incentive to keep infringing clips up.

That said, why do these things keep showing up if YouTube is removing them? Because they're popular. That is, YouTube hosts user-supplied content. The most popular content is also going to be uploaded by more users, and re-uploaded faster when it's gone. There is nothing YouTube can do about this fact. If the most popular content happens to be infringing, well that just means more work for YouTube and for the owners of the infringing content.

Finally, and once again, safe harbor status doesn't require that one receive no benefit at all from infringing activity, nor that such benefits be immediately turned over to the copyright holder. YouTube's status WRT DMCA have been explained earlier in this thread, and they do appear to satisfy the four requirements for being exempt from monetary liability, at least on my understanding of YouTube and those requirements. This "directly profit from hosting copyrighted material" argument doesn't change the law, nor does it accurately reflect YouTube's business model.

Originally posted by foxyshadis:Did you bother to read the posts you quoted at all? If you had, you'd have seen that a claim was made that it's impossible to download youtube video, and later that it's just not easy for noobs, when in fact it's quite trivial and dozens of sites are set up to do it. (If you know how to read HTML you don't need a site, but they're still quicker.) There was nothing mentioned about the morality of the action or how it involves the terms of service.

I was agreeing that it is not only possible, but trivial. We're in agreement about that. But I'm saying, so what? That's not a reason to shut down YouTube. It's very easy to run people over with a car, so lets outlaw cars?